Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
Sam Brown

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
Jonathan Swift

People are going to say what they say. I know sometimes I say things; I offend people.
Mike Tyson

Some argue that recognition of the genocide has become even more problematic now, when the world is at war with terrorism and the United States cannot afford to offend the sensibility of our Turkish ally.
Adam Schiff

That men should live honestly, quietly, and comfortably together, it is needful that they should live under a sense of God's will, and in awe of the divine power, hoping to please God, and fearing to offend Him, by their behaviour respectively.
Isaac Barrow

That text-books be permitted in Catholic schools such as will not offend the religious views of the minority, and which from an educational standpoint shall be satisfactory to the advisory board.
Charles Tupper

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
George Bernard Shaw

This is a revolution, damnit! We're going to have to offend somebody!
Peter Stone

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.
Neil Gaiman

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
Samuel Butler

We don't deliberately set out to offend. Unless we feel it's justified.
Graham Chapman

We take a lot of care with lyrics because we don't want to offend anybody.
Bill Haley

We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.
Mel Brooks

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Salman Rushdie

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Why don't the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these others didn't claim to be God, but Jesus did.
Josh McDowell